Academic publishing: No peeking… | The Economist

abernard102@gmail.com 2014-01-10

Summary:

" ... Now, any scientist worth his grant has a website, and that site will often let the casual visitor download copies of its owner’s work. And, though it has taken a while, some publishers have decided they do mind about this—indeed one, Elsevier, based in the Netherlands, has been fighting back. It is using the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), an American law that lets copyright holders demand the removal of anything posted online without their permission, to require individual scientists to eliminate from their websites papers published in its journals. In doing so it has stirred a hornets’ nest.  The first hornets to come buzzing out were members of a scientific social-networking site called Academia.edu (in which Rupert Pennant-Rea, chairman of The Economist Group, was an early investor). In early December they started receiving e-mails from Academia.edu informing them that some of their papers had been removed from the site in response to DMCA requests from Elsevier.  When some of them mentioned on Twitter what had happened, it became clear some universities had also received demands from Elsevier that papers be removed from the home pages of individual academics. There are, as a result, a lot of dischuffed scientists out there.  Elsevier (which also owns a scientific social-networking site called Mendeley—a direct competitor to Academia.edu) seems to have the law on its side ..."

Link:

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21593408-publishing-giant-goes-after-authors-its-journals-papers-no-peeking

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.elsevier oa.publishers oa.business_models oa.mendeley oa.academia.edu oa.versions oa.copyright oa.licensing oa.takedowns oa.libre

Date tagged:

01/10/2014, 08:17

Date published:

01/10/2014, 03:17